Four years ago today, I went into treatment for my eating disorder. It was the most terrifying, degrading, difficult and rewarding experience of my life.
I had a vaguely positive post drafted in my head last night about community and finding people and places that make you feel accepted and loved and safe, but this morning the positive just isn't flowing.
As I do far too often, I've spent the morning looking through old photos, old blog posts - remembering the rare moments I felt capable, functional, in control, and forgetting the other 99% where I was starving and miserable and dying. I didn't particularly care that I was dying then, and quite frankly I'm not sure I'd care all that much now, but the complete lack of control is something I never, ever want to go back to.
(There will be a lot of quotes from Wasted by Marya Hornbacher in this post, because the way she writes about eating disorders and mental illness rings so, so true with me.)
The passivity she writes about is so poignant, so dangerous. It's what all therapists tell you to reject - the idea that you are not in control. The idea that the decision to do these self-destructive things is not yours. And I see their point, mostly, because in the end it was my brain giving the orders and my body performing the actions.
This quote is one I repeat often, to blank faces and condescending nods. I think maybe it takes a certain level of apathy toward living, over a long period of time, to truly understand. When I say things like "you can't understand" it sounds so juvenile, but over the years I've found it to be true. I've found that there's a huge disconnect between people who have been to a place where they truly, desperately wanted to die, and those who haven't. When I say you can't understand, it's not meant to sound condescending. I hate finding people who do understand, because it means that they've been to this place as well, and it's not a place I'd wish on anyone.
As with most things related to mental illness, this isn't a place you just one day wake up in. It's one you slowly drift toward, wandering down a murky tunnel with a vague light at the end because, why not? There's nowhere better to go. This part, this first wandering, is when you are in control. When you make those decisions to fuck up your life that you have to take responsibility for, later. I have a vague notion in my mind of this time, of choosing to starve, of choosing to cut.
Some people find help along the way, friends or family who pull them back out of that tunnel. Some realize where they are, shake it off and run back. And some keep going, and going, plodding aimlessly, half-hoping someone will come pull them out. I don't know why some can pull themselves out, and others can't. We just keep wandering in the darkness, because that vague light at the other end is gone (and why don't we just turn around?)
There's no single moment, but at some point you'll look back toward the tunnel entrance and find a wall. That point, that wall, is what I mean when I say "you don't understand". And it's after that point that I really, truly believe you are no longer in control. The eating disorder (or other mental illness) becomes its own separate being, and it controls you completely. It takes over your mind, and you become it. (This is why I was so excited for the new movie about eating disorders called Starving in Suburbia; it portrays the main character's eating disorder as a literal separate person.)
I sometimes refer to my past as "when I was an eating disorder", and people say "no no, you had an eating disorder. You can't let your illness define you". I do understand this, and I no longer define myself that way. But at the time, it was true. I was the demon. I stand by this truth, no matter how unpopular it is.
I think it's one of the faults of the recovery world, denying this demon. We are taught to separate the "eating disorder voice" from the "recovery" voice in our heads. We're told to write dialogues between them, of our healthy self arguing against everything the eating disorder says. Which is all well and good, once you've actually separated them. For those stuck behind the wall like me, most of the time that takes 24/7 forced feeding and safe behavior.
There is something very freeing about giving up all your control. And I mean all of it. Even our bathroom trips were monitored. Once I got past the terrified degradation of being treated like a prisoner - they wanded us before going back to our rooms every night, we had bag checks multiple times a day, and most of my sweatshirts and sweatpants still don't have drawstrings - and utter hysterical panic at being trapped, it was surprisingly easy to give in. There was a deep sense of inevitability - if you don't eat what they say, when they say, eventually they'll tube feed you.
For so long I'd struggled to be in control, before losing it completely to the eating disorder, and then, quite suddenly, that was put in a straightjacket. It was like the part of me that had been possessed suddenly came loose, wriggled its way out of the eating disorder's grasp, stretched, and slowly stumbled toward that wall. For this part of me, the wall wasn't impassable. A part of me was able to slip out. By the time the eating disorder was partially released, it was too late; it couldn't regain complete control of me again, not without me knowing. That's one of the worst parts of recovery - you know. You can go back to the eating disorder anytime you want, of course, but this time you know what you're doing. This time you're not stumbling in the dark.
I honestly don't remember the moment the separation happened for me, but I know it happened during my second inpatient stay at BHC. I was there for two weeks the first time, before my insurance kicked me out because I was at a stable weight. I lasted about a week in PHP (partial hospitalization) at EDCC (where I eventually returned for another 5 months) before they sent me back to BHC because I still gave zero fucks about living. I was at BHC for three weeks the second time - insurance again kicked me out after 2 weeks, but my parents paid out of pocket (end cost $15k+ for that extra time, in case you were wondering).
I don't remember having any realizations, or vast changes in my life outlook. I do remember my intake phone call for returning to EDCC, a few days before I left BHC the second time. Specifically, I remember them asking "what was different" this time. I'm sure I had many answers, and the phone call itself was probably an hour, but the one thing I remember saying was "I learned to separate the ED voice from my own." It was probably the most important thing I ever did, and I don't even remember it.
When I returned to EDCC, I didn't feel all that different. But people kept exclaiming over how changed I was, how much more present and alive. How they could stand to be around me. (True story: one girl at EDCC the first time told me, after I said something about not caring if I died, that she didn't want to be in the same room as me.) I still don't see it, not really. I never had a "moment of clarity". But looking back at myself, four years and fourteen years, I suppose I can see the difference.
These are the last pictures I have before going into treatment. (I was about 20lbs above my lowest weight at this point. Treatment and recovery really have nothing to do with weight.) (Cut for partial nudity and trigger etc)
And from 7 years ago. It always shocks me, how sad I looked.
I wonder, sometimes, why I feel compelled to post these pictures. Not just me; people with mental illnesses frequently seem eager to share images portraying their struggle, their suffering. For a very long time, my life mantra was "I want to look as sick as I feel". I wanted people to stare at me on the street; I wanted to disappear. I felt simultaneously like far too much and not enough, and manipulating my body was the only way I knew how to convey that.
I think that's what it comes down to, for many of us. We are miserable and lonely and terrified and sick, and we want others to know we are miserable and lonely and terrified and sick but we don't know how to tell them, we don't know how to speak about these things that really matter. I was lucky that I went through this in an age of technology, because if I hadn't been able to share my thoughts and experiences online I wouldn't be alive today.
I am not the girl in these photos any longer, but she will always be a part of me. She is stuck in my mind, beyond that wall, in a place I can't touch. Occasionally she whispers in my head, or bangs against the wall, reminding me of the high after exercising, the rush at seeing a new low weight on the scale. Eating disordered people who post pictures often post the "best", the ones where they look thinnest or happiest or boniest. This only romanticizes the image, to my mind.
So to that girl in my head, remember this? Remember binging so much your ribs were shoved apart to make room, and your body was sore for days? Remember not sleeping because you were sweating and felt so sick? Remember slicing your skin to bits to take out some of the anger toward yourself?
(Self-injury trigger, like whoa):
Even you can't romanticize that.
And because I can't leave it on such a horrid note, here is the day I discharged from inpatient the second time, about two months after first going in. With my therapy cat Sylvie who lived at the hospital. Yes, I am actually a Crazy Cat Lady.
I had a vaguely positive post drafted in my head last night about community and finding people and places that make you feel accepted and loved and safe, but this morning the positive just isn't flowing.
As I do far too often, I've spent the morning looking through old photos, old blog posts - remembering the rare moments I felt capable, functional, in control, and forgetting the other 99% where I was starving and miserable and dying. I didn't particularly care that I was dying then, and quite frankly I'm not sure I'd care all that much now, but the complete lack of control is something I never, ever want to go back to.
(There will be a lot of quotes from Wasted by Marya Hornbacher in this post, because the way she writes about eating disorders and mental illness rings so, so true with me.)
But at some point, the body will essentially eat of its own accord in order to save itself. Mine began to do that. The passivity with which I speak here is intentional. It feels very much as if you are possessed, as if you have no will of your own but are in constant battle with your body, and you are losing. It wants to live. You want to die. You cannot both have your way.
The passivity she writes about is so poignant, so dangerous. It's what all therapists tell you to reject - the idea that you are not in control. The idea that the decision to do these self-destructive things is not yours. And I see their point, mostly, because in the end it was my brain giving the orders and my body performing the actions.
This quote is one I repeat often, to blank faces and condescending nods. I think maybe it takes a certain level of apathy toward living, over a long period of time, to truly understand. When I say things like "you can't understand" it sounds so juvenile, but over the years I've found it to be true. I've found that there's a huge disconnect between people who have been to a place where they truly, desperately wanted to die, and those who haven't. When I say you can't understand, it's not meant to sound condescending. I hate finding people who do understand, because it means that they've been to this place as well, and it's not a place I'd wish on anyone.
As with most things related to mental illness, this isn't a place you just one day wake up in. It's one you slowly drift toward, wandering down a murky tunnel with a vague light at the end because, why not? There's nowhere better to go. This part, this first wandering, is when you are in control. When you make those decisions to fuck up your life that you have to take responsibility for, later. I have a vague notion in my mind of this time, of choosing to starve, of choosing to cut.
Some people find help along the way, friends or family who pull them back out of that tunnel. Some realize where they are, shake it off and run back. And some keep going, and going, plodding aimlessly, half-hoping someone will come pull them out. I don't know why some can pull themselves out, and others can't. We just keep wandering in the darkness, because that vague light at the other end is gone (and why don't we just turn around?)
There's no single moment, but at some point you'll look back toward the tunnel entrance and find a wall. That point, that wall, is what I mean when I say "you don't understand". And it's after that point that I really, truly believe you are no longer in control. The eating disorder (or other mental illness) becomes its own separate being, and it controls you completely. It takes over your mind, and you become it. (This is why I was so excited for the new movie about eating disorders called Starving in Suburbia; it portrays the main character's eating disorder as a literal separate person.)
I sometimes refer to my past as "when I was an eating disorder", and people say "no no, you had an eating disorder. You can't let your illness define you". I do understand this, and I no longer define myself that way. But at the time, it was true. I was the demon. I stand by this truth, no matter how unpopular it is.
I think it's one of the faults of the recovery world, denying this demon. We are taught to separate the "eating disorder voice" from the "recovery" voice in our heads. We're told to write dialogues between them, of our healthy self arguing against everything the eating disorder says. Which is all well and good, once you've actually separated them. For those stuck behind the wall like me, most of the time that takes 24/7 forced feeding and safe behavior.
There is something very freeing about giving up all your control. And I mean all of it. Even our bathroom trips were monitored. Once I got past the terrified degradation of being treated like a prisoner - they wanded us before going back to our rooms every night, we had bag checks multiple times a day, and most of my sweatshirts and sweatpants still don't have drawstrings - and utter hysterical panic at being trapped, it was surprisingly easy to give in. There was a deep sense of inevitability - if you don't eat what they say, when they say, eventually they'll tube feed you.
For so long I'd struggled to be in control, before losing it completely to the eating disorder, and then, quite suddenly, that was put in a straightjacket. It was like the part of me that had been possessed suddenly came loose, wriggled its way out of the eating disorder's grasp, stretched, and slowly stumbled toward that wall. For this part of me, the wall wasn't impassable. A part of me was able to slip out. By the time the eating disorder was partially released, it was too late; it couldn't regain complete control of me again, not without me knowing. That's one of the worst parts of recovery - you know. You can go back to the eating disorder anytime you want, of course, but this time you know what you're doing. This time you're not stumbling in the dark.
I honestly don't remember the moment the separation happened for me, but I know it happened during my second inpatient stay at BHC. I was there for two weeks the first time, before my insurance kicked me out because I was at a stable weight. I lasted about a week in PHP (partial hospitalization) at EDCC (where I eventually returned for another 5 months) before they sent me back to BHC because I still gave zero fucks about living. I was at BHC for three weeks the second time - insurance again kicked me out after 2 weeks, but my parents paid out of pocket (end cost $15k+ for that extra time, in case you were wondering).
I don't remember having any realizations, or vast changes in my life outlook. I do remember my intake phone call for returning to EDCC, a few days before I left BHC the second time. Specifically, I remember them asking "what was different" this time. I'm sure I had many answers, and the phone call itself was probably an hour, but the one thing I remember saying was "I learned to separate the ED voice from my own." It was probably the most important thing I ever did, and I don't even remember it.
When I returned to EDCC, I didn't feel all that different. But people kept exclaiming over how changed I was, how much more present and alive. How they could stand to be around me. (True story: one girl at EDCC the first time told me, after I said something about not caring if I died, that she didn't want to be in the same room as me.) I still don't see it, not really. I never had a "moment of clarity". But looking back at myself, four years and fourteen years, I suppose I can see the difference.
It's never over. Not really. Not when you stay down there as long as I did, not when you've lived in the netherworld longer than you've lived in this material one, where things are very bright and large and make such strange noises. You never come back, not all the way. Always, there is an odd distance between you and the people you love and the people you meet, a barrier, thin as the glass of a mirror. You never come all the way out of the mirror; you stand, for the rest of your life, with one foot in this world and one in another, where everything is upside down and backward and sad.
It is the distance of marred memory, of a twisted and shape-shifting past. When people talk about their childhood, their adolescence, their college days, I laugh along and try not to think: that was when I was throwing up in my elementary school bathroom, that was when I was sleeping with strangers to show off the sharp tips of my bones, that was when I lost sight of my soul and died.
And it is the distance of the present, as well - the distance that lies between people in general because of the different lives we have lived. I don't know who I would be, now, if I had not lived the life I have, and so I cannot alter my need for distance - nor can I lessen the low and omnipresent pain that that distance creates. The entirety of my life is overshadowed by one singular and near-fatal obsession.
And from 7 years ago. It always shocks me, how sad I looked.
I wonder, sometimes, why I feel compelled to post these pictures. Not just me; people with mental illnesses frequently seem eager to share images portraying their struggle, their suffering. For a very long time, my life mantra was "I want to look as sick as I feel". I wanted people to stare at me on the street; I wanted to disappear. I felt simultaneously like far too much and not enough, and manipulating my body was the only way I knew how to convey that.
I think that's what it comes down to, for many of us. We are miserable and lonely and terrified and sick, and we want others to know we are miserable and lonely and terrified and sick but we don't know how to tell them, we don't know how to speak about these things that really matter. I was lucky that I went through this in an age of technology, because if I hadn't been able to share my thoughts and experiences online I wouldn't be alive today.
I am not the girl in these photos any longer, but she will always be a part of me. She is stuck in my mind, beyond that wall, in a place I can't touch. Occasionally she whispers in my head, or bangs against the wall, reminding me of the high after exercising, the rush at seeing a new low weight on the scale. Eating disordered people who post pictures often post the "best", the ones where they look thinnest or happiest or boniest. This only romanticizes the image, to my mind.
So to that girl in my head, remember this? Remember binging so much your ribs were shoved apart to make room, and your body was sore for days? Remember not sleeping because you were sweating and felt so sick? Remember slicing your skin to bits to take out some of the anger toward yourself?
(Self-injury trigger, like whoa):
Even you can't romanticize that.
And because I can't leave it on such a horrid note, here is the day I discharged from inpatient the second time, about two months after first going in. With my therapy cat Sylvie who lived at the hospital. Yes, I am actually a Crazy Cat Lady.
There is never a sudden revelation, a complete and tidy explanation for why it happened, or why it ends, or why or who you are. You want one and I want one, but there isn't one. It comes in bits and pieces, and you stitch them together wherever they fit, and when you are done you hold yourself up, and still there are holes and you are a rag doll, invented, imperfect. And yet you are all that you have, so you must be enough. There is no other way.
It is not a sudden leap from sick to well. It is a slow, strange meander from sick to mostly well. The misconception that eating disorders are a medical disease in the traditional sense is not helpful here. There is no 'cure'. A pill will not fix it, though it may help. Ditto therapy, ditto food, ditto endless support from family and friends. You fix it yourself. It is the hardest thing that I have ever done, and I found myself stronger for doing it. Much stronger.
And there is a weird aftermath, when it is not exactly over, and yet you have given it up. You go back and forth in your head, often, about giving it up. It’s hard to understand, when you are sitting there in your chair, having breakfast or whatever, that giving it up is stronger than holding on, that “letting yourself go” could mean that you have succeeded rather than failed. You eat your goddamn Cheerios and bicker with the bitch in your head who keeps telling you you’re fat and weak: Shut up, you say. I’m busy, leave me alone. And when she leaves you alone there’s a silence and a solitude that will take some time getting used to. You will miss her, sometimes. Bear in mind she’s trying to kill you – but you have a life to live. It’s an incredible loss, a profound grief. And, in the end, after a long time and with more work that you ever thought possible, a time when it gets easier.
There is, in the end, the letting go.
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